


Blood and Iron

by Beech27



Series: Republic City Blues [3]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, F/F, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 12:50:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4263870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beech27/pseuds/Beech27
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All we love, we lose. </p><p>A Kuvira POV prequel to Republic City Blues</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Belonging

My feet were ankle deep in mud, and the mosquitoes were biting. It was a humid morning, and their eggs had been innumerable recently. I had expected this, but I had come regardless. It wasn’t as if I had a choice. We were starving, my parents and I. In the acute sense that hunger was gnawing out our insides, but also in the slow, perpetual way that water erodes stone.

I poked at my ribs, sucked in a deep breath, and closed my eyes.

I felt the mud. Then, I felt beyond. To the soil below. I felt it as a steadying influence, yet malleable. It was a constant but was not itself constant. It could be moved. And when the proper moment came, I would move it. I reached and I felt until I felt a sudden lack.

Which was precisely my aim.

I widened my stance, punched down, and grasped onto the earth surrounding that blank space. I flung back, dousing myself in water, mud, and scum.

I smiled and laughed as I opened my eyes, and wiped the filth from my face. Sitting on the ground was a sweet tuber the size of my head. Knotted and gnarly purple skin, and I knew underneath that there was tender, yellow flesh. I knelt down and lifted it up, pausing for a moment. It was heavy, of course. But more than that, I just wanted the embrace. To thank it, almost. We would eat tonight.

With renewed strength, I sprung back down the river towards Zaofu’s Weeds, my home.

—

We called it the river, because it was the closest thing we could find. Really, it was more like a stream. Just a faint trickle of water, running down from the mountains that surrounded Zaofu. It ran near enough to the Weeds - the shantytown I lived in - like a single solitary tear, shed on our behalf.

That was all the sympathy we ever received. Certainly, there was none from Zaofu itself, nor its Matriarch. She had founded Zaofu before my time, for reasons that were her own and so no could say, really, what she had meant for it to be. As the city grew, however, so did the mythology surrounding it. It was a city to foster the arts, a place for free expression and hedonistic indulgence. A platinum flower, itself art, built to draw in and coddle those wealthy enough to prosper in such an environment.

Of course, others followed. Maybe they believed they would one day find their own riches, but more likely, they were chasing next week’s high. Eventually, it became a quest for next day’s, and then the next hour’s. At a certain point it was never enough. You couldn’t stand even to live in the moment. The fundamental experience of life was eroded down to nothing. Zaofu was a flower. Those who loved inside its walls called us weeds. 

Chasing Papaver somniferum. Opium. Poppy.

My parents were among those would gave chase. I couldn’t say exactly when, because I was either too young, or not born yet. I couldn’t ask them either, because they couldn’t recall. They couldn’t do much more than grunt, and lick their cracked lips.

I remember, when I was very, very young, sitting on the dirt floor, sketching with my fingers. My mother and father were sitting on the other side of the floor, staring into nothing through the yellow film that caked their eyes.

“How much do you love me?” I asked. A stupid question. But then, at least, I could count on an answer. They hadn’t fallen so far yet, hadn’t completely lost themselves

So no, not stupid. Ignorant, perhaps. Naive, certainly. But not stupid. I was young and I did not know the answer. There was much I didn’t know, of course.

The question seemed to bring some sense of presence to my mother. Briefly, she seemed lucid. She seemed, however faintly, to be a person, rather than a vessel.

She smiled. “So much.”

“How much?” I pressed.

“Too high to count,” she said. “You couldn’t put a price on it.”

And she scratched at her arms, peeling away scaly flakes.

—

There was no shortage of garbage in the Weeds. Ask the right person, and they’d tell you that’s all the whole thing was. But some of it was more useful than other things. A had heard rumor of a girl finding a glass bottle, and rigging it to her ceiling, after mixing something in. The result functioned almost like an electric light. I thought it might be nice to have something like that, so I was thrilled to find a - completely intact! - glass bottle on my way back.

I picked it up as well, balancing it on top of the tuber.

Our home was nice, as places went in the Weeds. I had bent the earth into four walls and a roof, which was far, far better than most in the area could manage. I had offered to help build similar structures for other families, but my parents had quickly put an end to that. It wasn’t safe, they said, making a spectacle of yourself. Not as a young girl. Not in this place.

And that was true, of course. I had heard stories. And I was always very careful, when bringing back food or something else that had value. That day, I had both. And so I was especially careful.

But the Weeds were quiet, that day. Very little of the usual bustle. I had made the trek without having to dodge behind a lean-to, or subtly bend a hole for a pursuer to trip in.

Our home was quiet as well, though that was to be expected. My parents didn’t really speak. Didn’t really do anything.

It was completely silent, right until I heard the soft but resonant thud of flesh being struck. I knew that sound as well. Wasn’t rare, in the Weeds.

I dropped the tuber, but kept the bottle, and stepped inside.

The dirt was tinged red by flame, held from the open hand of a firebender. His was the only light, but it was plenty to illuminate the small space. Plenty to show me the four other men, all clad in the Matriarch’s metal, standing over my parents, raining blows down on them.

And even though the light itself was red, I could see blood on the floor and the walls. There was no mistaking it.

“Stop!” The firebender.

The men did, turning to him. Then, they saw me, and laughed.

“This her?” asked one of them.

The firebender shrugged. “Guess so.” He nodded to my parents. “Is this your daughter?”

They both groaned. Perhaps they nodded as well, but it didn’t look like it to me. I’d have thought them dead, if I didn’t know that this was what alive looked like, in the Weeds.

The firebender shrugged. “What’s your name, kid?”

I tilted my head.

“Parents couldn’t remember. Or at least, they couldn’t say.”

“Kuvira,” I whispered.

“Kuvira. Looks like we got the right one, then.”

“What?”

He laughed. “Parents couldn’t pay. Well, they couldn’t pay money. But of course…” he shrugged. “They have one other thing of value.”

My breath caught in my throat. I gripped the bottle tighter, and widened my stance, like at the river. I could pull things up, but I could bury them just as easily.

“Kuvira…” The voice was faint, broken, but it was my mother’s.

I took a step towards her, reaching out my hand. “Yes?”

“Go with them,” she said.

“Go? Wha… what do you mean?”

“What she means,” said the firebender, stepping in between us. “Is that you belong to us now. To the Matriarch. You’re an earthbender, and that gives you some value. Enough to forgive your parents’ debts, and even get them another ten grams.”

I dropped the bottle. Then, I dropped to my knees. I didn’t cry. I couldn’t. I could only feel nothing, and there were no tears waiting in that great, looming void.

“Then why…”

He shrugged. “We had to discipline them somehow. Well, we didn’t have to, exactly. But there’s nothing wrong with doing a little extra. Nothing wrong with a little workplace ambition.”

“You’ll leave them alone?”

“For now. And forever. If they pay.”

I placed my hands on the ground, and felt possibilities. A hundred ways I could fight, or escape, or-

I stood up. I nodded.

The firebender smiled. “Good girl.”

—

No one could ever state the population of the Weeds with any authority, but it was certainly higher than zero. As the men led me, I might have guessed a number right around there, however. There was no one, nothing. And that seemed appropriate, really. It matched the feeling inside of me.

My parents had found a way to put a price on their love - on me. Ten grams, and debt forgiveness. That was my worth.

Nothing in the Weeds stood very high, and Zaofu itself was impossible to miss. So it was not at all difficult to tell that the men were leading me somewhere other than the city itself. In fact, we were going in the opposite direction.

I said nothing, did nothing. It didn’t matter, in any case.

We came to a car, and they shoved me in the backseat. Everyone else got in, and we drove. Drove, until the lush green mountains around Zaofu ceded to desolate, broken ground. The horizon flattened, the blue sky weighing heavy down on it.

There was a speck on the horizon that became three, as we approached. Three other cars, parked in the middle of nowhere.

We stopped twenty meters or so away from them. The men got out and pulled me with them.

Across from us were eight men, all armed. In front was a man in a garish vest and large hat, twirling an especially large gun. He chewed an extinguished cigarette, and nodded as we stopped.

“Bring her over,” he said.

The men did.

He stooped over me and I could see the black of his teeth, feel the heat of his breath. He poked my shoulder with his gun, then began to walk circles around me. Prodding me with it. He shrugged.

I choked down bile. There was nowhere to go.

“Good enough?” asked the firebender.

“Little young,” said the man. “Even for me. Twelve?”

I glanced. We had driven for hours. Too far from anywhere. Too far-

“How should I know? And anyway, you have clients for that.”

Clients. Buying, selling-

He choked on a laugh. “Oh, I know. Still, I can’t help but feel a little…”

“Don’t pretend.”

“What? A man like me isn’t allowed morals?”

“You can have them. But giving them voice is a little pointless. Just pay. Take the girl. We’re done.”

I twitched. I could just bury myself. That would be better.

The man gestured, and one of his men brought a briefcase. He patted it. “Here.”

“Open it.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“No.”

“Fair, I suppose.”

He opened the briefcase, displaying stacks of some kind of thin, colored paper.

The firebender seemed appeased. “Hand it over.”

The man shut the briefcase. He tossed it in a high arc.

Then, he fired.

His gun cried out five times before the briefcase hit the ground. But it did hit the ground. There was no one standing to catch it.

He smiled at me, and began calmly reloading his gun. One round at a time, then rotating the revolving chamber. I took a step back.

The earth was steady, omnipresent. I could swallow them up, or bring it crashing down. They probably didn’t even know I was an earthbender. But even still, any bending would take a moment. Did I have that long?

I smirked. Did it matter?

I moved. So did the men. Quickly, they produced guns. And quickly, they fired. So too did the man with the revolver.

But not quickly enough. The starved earth opened up underneath each of them, then closed.

I flung my hands about on instinct. A hand wouldn’t block a bullet, but I tried. None of the bullets hit me. Impossible luck, but I would need more.

I’d need a gun too. I was tired. Too tired to bend like that for another few hours at least. I found the revolver on the ground. He had dropped it.

It was heavy in my hands, too large. But the sun caught it just right and it seemed to sing, to speak to me. The metal said that this was right.

I turned back towards the car I had arrived in. I had never driven before.

I looked at the men who had brought me. All four of those clad in metal were shot through the left eye. The backs of their skulls were torn off. The bone shards were as pale as the blanched dirt.

I tried to suppress the sickness in my stomach again, but couldn’t manage. I vomited. I wanted nothing more than to lay down and sleep, but I knew better. I was dehydrated now. The men had consumed all our water on the way out. Stupid. I needed to act.

I gathered myself, and did.

The firebender had been hit was well, but not in the eye. He had turned, maybe. Or perhaps the man had just missed. His cheek was torn open but his skull remained in one piece. His eyes were open and he still breathed. There was still life in him.

I kicked him in the ribs.

He groaned.

I spat on his face. “Get up.”

He reached out a hand, but I didn’t take it. He staggered to his feet. “You… you…”

“I what?”

“The bullets…”

“What about them?”

“They missed you.”

“Clearly.”

“No… no…” he gasped, doubled over. “They didn’t miss. You made them miss. That… that’s…”

The man was hallucinating. Clearly. If he was going to drive me back, we needed to get going.

I pressed the gun to his head. “Get in the car.”

“Where are we going?” his voice lilted.

“Zaofu. You said I belong to the Matriarch now, right? I’m going to talk to her about that.”

He nodded. “She’ll like that. She’ll like you. You made the bullets dance. No one else has ever done that before.”

He twirled, imitating a dance, then collapsed in a heap.

I clenched my teeth. “Get. Up. I need you to drive.”

He rolled on the ground, shaking his head. “No… no… this one is easy. New model. Automatic. You just point it and vroom…”

I raised an eyebrow. “Which is the gas?”

“Gas?”

“The vroom? Which is that?”

“Oh,” he laughed. “The right pedal. Left is screech.”

I stepped over him, and started towards the car. Easy, he said. Maybe I could try. He wasn’t going to drive me anywhere. He was mad.

“Wait,” he cried out, then crawled towards me. “You can’t just… just leave me here.”

I stopped, but didn’t speak.

“I… I’ll die. It’s hot. So hot. And I’m hungry. And thirsty, and-”

I shot him in the head.

It was the merciful thing to do. That’s what I told myself. He would have suffered, otherwise. I spared him that. I spared him pain, even though he would have caused me so much.

I turned away from his broken corpse, and my eyes fell on the briefcase. I had forgotten it. The contents didn’t look like any money I had ever seen, but still, everyone acted as if it was. Or at least, as if it was valuable. They were willing to trade me for it, after all.

How much was it, I wondered? Enough to go start a new life somewhere else?

But where? There were no roads here, no signs. I was lost, and without food or water. I knew the way back to Zaofu. Or at least, I could guess. We had driven straight, more or less. I would turn the car around. I would drive back.

And then?

I could give this to my parents. I could wade back among the Weeds, and perhaps pull them out.

But for what?

So they could spend it all in a month?

No. No, I did not have parents any longer. They gave me away. Their choice. They could live - or die - with the consequences.

I picked up the briefcase. It wasn’t heavy. Didn’t feel like enough to trade for a person. But then, no one had ever really considered me to be that. I was a weed.

I squeezed my gun, and turned towards the car. I would take the briefcase back to Zaofu. I would take it - and myself - to the Matriarch. I would have value. I would belong.


	2. Six Shooter Salvation

I didn’t know how to drive the car, not exactly. My youth had nothing to do with it. Kids my age drove in the Earth Kingdom. I was told, anyway. I was told that youth from wealthy families were given all sorts of motorized things to play with. Toys more than transportation. Sato was attached to almost all of it. Satomobile. Satocycle. On and on and on. The name was nearing omnipresence. 

This, I gathered, was a Satomobile. I couldn’t read anything except the most basic letters, and so the words scrawled on the back, sides, and interior didn’t make sense to me. There were little symbols though, that looked like half a gear. I’d seen those before, and so I knew, or I thought I knew, that I was driving a Satomobile. 

I gripped the steering wheel with both hands, wrung my fingers around it tight, and pressed on the right pedal. True to what the dead firebender had told me, I vroom’d. I vroom’d something fierce. I little too much, and it pressed me back in the seat; but I didn’t mind. I was out in the middle of nowhere. Nothing but horizon all around me, pale blue weighing heavy on the earth, pressing it down into flat, blanched white. 

The way I was headed, that wouldn’t last long. Up from the horizon would grow mountains, pressed up from the earth by powers beyond comprehension. I’d always wondered how they ended up like that, so high, so jagged, so powerful. There was something ambivalent about them. Like they looked down on all of human ambition and couldn’t even muster a shrug. Maybe they just thought we’d pass on by, nothing but dust to them. I guessed that everything did, ultimately. 

I relaxed. Taking some pressure off the right pedal, and letting my right hand drift onto the passenger seat beside me. It drifted towards the gun, and settled there. It was too big, too gaudy, and yet the curve of it felt comfortable in my palm, the weight of it balanced. It was heavy, sure; but when I stood I did so with the whole of the earth underneath me, steadying me. I wasn’t just one girl. I was a girl who could call up a mountain of her own. 

And a girl who could put a bullet into your skull, then right out the back again. I rolled the memory around my mind, refusing to look away. I did want to. I wanted to cast it right out the window, then speed away from it as fast as possible. But I knew. I knew I had to face it, because I knew I’d have to face things like that again. 

I watched him die. Over and over and over again, until I could taste the dirt in my mouth, and feel the shards of his shattered skull clatter against my thin, makeshift boots. I pressed down the rising sickness in my stomach, denied myself tears. The man deserved it. He beat my parents. My parents who had given me away, but… that didn’t matter. And even then, he’d betrayed his mission. He was to take me to the Matriarch. I was an earthbender. I was valuable. But he wasn’t interested in that value. He wanted to sell me to a different purpose altogether, one I was dead set against fulfilling. 

I was more than that. And I was more than an earthbender too. I was a weed, maybe; but sometimes the roots of a weed go down deep, down into that rich, dark soil. Sometimes they grow up so damn strong that you can’t pull them out, can’t kill them. 

So. They could call me a weed. They could call whatever they pleased. I’d call myself Kuvira, and that would be enough. In time, people would know that name as well. 

I squeezed the gun tighter, and I drove. I drove until the green washed over the dirt, until mountains pressed up into the horizon, splitting the blue. I drove until the now setting sun gleamed off of Zaofu. I aimed for that burning flower, and I drove. 

I had never been in Zaofu proper. No one from the Weeds had, so far as I knew. There was just the one road that went right in, and it was gated. Though even that implied an easier opening than reality offered. Truthfully, it wasn’t so much a static gate as plain metal, that could be bent open when the right person came calling. 

I wasn’t such a person. But then, they didn’t stop me, and they didn’t ask. They opened it right up, and I drove right in. Maybe they could read something on the car, or maybe it was just that little gear. Maybe a Satomobile said something about a person, and they just assumed. Whatever the case, I wasn’t going to argue.

I drove in, and I drove up. I didn’t know for sure where one found the Matriarch, but I figured it wasn’t too hard to guess. Head towards the spire at the center. If Zaofu was a flower, then the sweetest nectar would be at the center. She’d want that for herself, and so that’s where I would go. 

It wasn’t easy. The streets were crowded full of cars, and no small amount of people. I’d expected everyone in Zaofu to be a picture of cleanliness, of perfectly pristine propriety. That wasn’t exactly what I got. Sure, there was wealth on display. But it was wealth that had been rolled around in the dirt a bit, used hard. It was depravity and decadence. I didn’t know what the signs advertised, that hung above every building, but I could make guesses. In some cases, I didn’t have to. There were crudely drawn outlines of bottles, cups, needles, and pipes. Women. Men. Sometimes both. Sometimes I couldn’t tell which. 

I kept moving, narrowly avoiding crashing the car only a few times. Things cleaned up. There were more men and women clad in metal, and their numbers seemed inversely proportional to the rest of the crowd. All the signs were in letters now, and so I couldn’t tell what was on offer. But they looked nice. Many were several stories tall. I saw one half-dome, with seats all around, and a stage at the center. I wondered how anyone could possibly hear a thing, seated all the way at the back. Could the dome do that? 

I didn’t know. Sometimes, in the Weeds, people would get together to sing, dance, or listen to stories. But that wasn’t often. Someone usually got stabbed pretty quick. 

Of course, people probably got stabbed in Zaofu as well. At least one of the buildings I’d seen must have been a healing center of sorts, but I wasn’t quite sure what symbol would be attached to that. Or maybe it was just in writing. Maybe they only wanted to bother fixing you if you could read the sign. It wouldn’t have shocked me. 

The road when on, winding an emptying. No one stopped me, until I reached somewhere close to the center. There was another gate, that wasn’t really a gate at all. A high, metal wall, closed unless you spoke the language of metal. Some did, in Zaofu. People said the Matriarch spoke with unsurpassed eloquence. But I couldn’t say. I could talk to dirt. 

“Because you are dirt,” I heard memories say, laughing. It wasn’t an infrequent joke. I didn’t think it was actually a joke at all, really.

I stopped the car, and the guards came forward. Four of them, all done up in metal armor. I wondered why. It looked fancy, and maybe that was reason enough. But I didn’t think it would stop a bullet. Of course, I didn’t want to find out. 

One of them knocked on the window, and made a spinning motion with her hands. 

I shrugged.

“Roll down the window,” she said.

I looked down at the door, and saw a little handle that looked like it might twist. I tried it, but it didn’t go. I tried the other way, and it did. The window went down.

She woman raised an eyebrow. “You don’t look like Nakamura.”

I swallowed, and let my finger come to rest on the trigger. I didn’t want to do this again. But if I had to, I’d-

The gun twitched, and when I glanced over, the barrel was twisted in a knot. I turned back to the woman, whose hand was in a fist. “You-”

“Yes. And don’t be stupid, kid.”

“Kuvira.”

“Excuse me?”

“My name’s Kuvira. Not kid.”

She patted the side of the car, and glanced at her fellow guards. She pursed her lips. “Give me… uh… just a second. Ok?”

“I’m not going anywhere.” And it as true. I really had no idea how to go backwards in a car, and there was no way to move forward, without their permission. 

The guards huddled, and I could only make out the slightest sound of their conversation. I couldn’t put any of it together, though. I certainly couldn’t guess what they were going to do with me. Or to me. I still squeezed my gun, despite the fact that it was rendered completely useless. The barrel looked like a shoelace. I hadn’t had shoelaces in a while, but I still remembered. 

The woman came back to my open window. “You’re who Nakamura was supposed to bring, right?”

“I don’t know who that is, but-”

“The firebender.”

“I was going to guess that. Then yes. I mean, probably. He came for me, and my parents…”

“No struggle?”

I felt tears pressing at my eyes, but I wouldn’t allow them forward. Still, I couldn’t deny the anger rising up me. My face must have turned red, and it was certainly warm. “There didn’t have to be! my parents… they… they were going to give me up! But he still beat them. Him, and the rest. They didn’t have to do that. They didn’t have to…” I clenched. If I allowed any movement, the tears would come. So I didn’t allow any.

The woman sighed, and gestured towards the gun. “And the little girl walks in with a big gun, killing them all. I can’t even feel bad for them, really. That was a very unprofessional acquisition, if what you’re telling me is true.”

“It is.” I squeezed out the words.

“I don’t doubt it. Knowing those involved.” She shrugged. “But. This isn’t the worst thing. Not really. You brought yourself, which is… odd. But at least it means today isn’t a total loss. We still get you.”

I shook my head, and clenched my teeth. “No.”

“No?”

“You don’t ‘get’ me.”

“Well of course I don’t. The Matriarch, I mean. She-”

“Not her either.”

The woman chuckled. “Cute, kid.”

“I told you-”

“Ok, ok. Cute, Kuvira. Tough, Kuvira. But you aren’t exactly in a position to negotiate, are you? You’re the only chip you have, and the Matriarch owns you already.”

I grinned, and pulled the briefcase out from under the seat. I opened it.

The woman blanched, and her eyes quivered.

“How did you-”

“I’m not telling you. I’ll tell the Matriarch.”

The woman laughed again, full throated this time. She smiled at me, and her eyes steadied. “That’s a big fucking chip you’ve got there, Kuvira. Not just the money. But the story behind it. I might like to hear it sometime.” 

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m sure you’ll hear the story. I’m sure you’ll hear all about me.”

“You’re a confident ki…” She shrugged. “You’re confident, Kuvira.” 

She gestured to the other guards, and with flowing, coordinated movements, they opened up the wall. The road went in only a little further, before turning left, and ending in a lot. 

“Park there,” she said, pointing. “I’ll take you to your audience with the Matriarch.”

I nodded, squeezed my gun, and drove through the opening. 

The lot was full, but I found a space. I grabbed the briefcase, my gun, and got out. The guards caught up quickly. 

We walked down the sidewalk, towards the center spire of Zaofu, through a dream. The grass was soft, and a vibrant green. 

I’d seen kale once, when someone in the Weeds had managed to steal a ton of it from somewhere. Maybe the idea wasn’t to share it, but they didn’t end up having a choice. People found out, and if they hadn’t, they probably would have been killed. But they did offer, and I had gone. My parents had stayed home, but I managed to bring some back for them. When the leaves were massaged, something inside of them broke. The green became green in truth, an ideal of green, and the leaves softened. It tasted bitter but moist, earthy, only just faintly sweet because of some berries I had found earlier that day, and mashed together to form a crude dressing. 

This was that kind of green, and the air here tasted like that. Every breath was delicious. The metal gleamed like snow capped mountains in the early hours of dawn. It was surreal. I felt, suddenly, very self conscious. I was filthy, still splattered and caked with the mud from earlier. My clothes were rags. 

I did not belong. I took a breath, though, I told myself that I would. That I had to. It was here or nowhere. 

We walked until the guards from the gate passed me off to another set. They mumbled something about the Matriarch, argued a bit, and then relented. I walked with them until we came to two great doors. And they were doors. The opened the same as any other. Maybe, if you made it this far, you were either invincible or invited. Or maybe just walking into a trap. 

I swallowed down that last option, before the bitter taste overwhelmed me. 

I focused instead on the gun in my hand - still mangled, but still comforting - and the art that line the halls. Paintings, statues, and sculptures. I didn’t understand most of it, really. None of it looked especially life-like. But it managed to worm its way inside of me, find some wellspring of emotion, and then twist. It made me feel, and so by the time we reached another set of guarded doors, I was holding back tears again. But I did manage. 

The guards nodded to the other guards, and the doors opened. This time, there was no hallway. Just a single room, aspiring to the heavens, shining like the stars. At the end of it was a woman, draped in green, luxuriating on a brilliant throne. I approached, with the guards, and stopped just short of her. She was terribly beautiful. Like a sculpture come to life, an abstraction of human ideals pulled together into a real person. Her eyes were sharp as steel, and as hard. She smiled at me, and I felt weak. 

“Kuvira,” she said. 

I nodded.

“I’m told you’ve requested an audience with me?”

I had asked to speak to the Matriarch, and this, this was her. There could be no doubting it. I glanced at the guards. “Alone… please,” I managed.

She waved them away, as one would a cloud of insects. They did not protest. It struck me that it would be very hard to do so. There was something very compelling about her, a severe glamour.

Still. I was not here to be persuaded. I waited until the door shut behind me, and I opened the briefcase. 

The guard had reacted with a shock, as if this were some perverse amount of money. The Matriarch did not flinch, but merely raised one eyebrow a fraction. She traced a finger down her sharp jaw. 

“Where did you get that?” she asked.

I swallowed, and looked just to the side of her. The throne was easier to stare into, brilliant though it was. 

“A man,” I started. “A man out in the barrens. A long drive. Four, maybe five hours. Going hard.”

“Nakamura was taking you?”

“Yes. And the rest of his men. We drove until we came to three parked cars. There were… eight men, I think. One with a large hat, a wide brim.” I held up the gun. “And this. He, if I had to guess, was the leader. He seemed like it, at least. He had this.” I nodded to the briefcase. “He offered it to Nakamura, in exchange for…” I swallowed. “In exchange for me.”

The Matriarch pinched the bridge of her nose, and there was a hint of a crease on her forehead. Just a hint. “You don’t know what you did, of course. How could you? Just a child, just-”

“I am not just a child.” The words escaped before I could examine them.

The Matriarch smiled, however, and turned over her hand.She beckoned me forward. 

I took the steps carefully, slowly. 

“Hand me the briefcase,” she said. 

I closed it, and did.

She took it, placed it beside her throne. She placed her hand on my head, and slowly ran her fingers through my hair, then around my chin. She tilted it back, so that I would look directly at her. 

“You killed them all? I knew you were an earthbender. News like that, it travels. Still, though, I wouldn’t have guessed...”

I shook my head, but only slightly. She was gripping harder. “No. The man killed Nakamura. He killed all your men. Shot them through the head.” I thought of Nakamura, and the bullet I put through his brain. I pushed the memory aside. “But then I killed him. Him and the others they were going to… to-”

“I know. Jian. That’s who you killed. I know the hat. I know the gun. I know what he deals in. And you should know, that wasn’t your intended fate. I deal in many things, but not… that. But tell me… how, precisely, did you manage? Jian was armed, of course. But he shot my men. Perhaps he was empty, then. But surely those with him were not so foolish? You could have impaled them, of course, or perhaps buried them. But bending takes a moment. Pulling a trigger is faster. They must have fired. And you… you don’t look to be bleeding.”

I made the bullets dance. That’s what Nakamura had said. I had done what only she - the Matriarch? - had done before. She would like me, he insisted. But he was delirious, at that point. A raving man on his way to death. I didn’t know exactly what he meant. But I knew I couldn’t say it was luck. I licked my lips. 

“I… I made the bullets… dance.” I tried not to make it sound like a question, or a lie.

The Matriarch held my gaze. I couldn’t so much as blink.

“You’re not lying,” she said.

“No.” I put steel in my voice.

The Matriarch held out her hand again. “Give me the gun.”

I did, almost without thinking. She held it, then twisted her other hand over the barrel. The gun looked as if it had never been deformed. 

“Take ten steps back,” she said.

My legs took me, quivering as they went. I should have known better. I had allowed myself to think that she would be grateful, that she would reward me. But no, no, the world didn’t work that way. People didn’t get what they deserved, they got what they got. What they took. And I had taken the briefcase, and the gun - and then given both away. I had nothing. I was nothing once again. And now, the Matriarch was about to put a bullet in me, for my troubles. She had what she wanted already. I was expendable. A bender, sure, but what was that to her, who had everything in excess already?

I stopped. I squared to her, and clenched my jaw. I would face her, at least. I would face this. 

The Matriarch leveled the gun at my head. “Dance for me, Kuvira.”

And she fired.


End file.
